The Bundesliga could lose touch with the rapid development in women’s football.
Photo: image/Uwe Kraft
Your initiative “Football can do more” presented a concept paper to the German Football Association (DFB), which envisages far-reaching reforms for the future viability of women’s football. What’s behind it?
Katja Kraus: In our circle there are different perspectives on women’s football, competence and experience. This diversity resulted in a discussion paper, the core of which is: Professional women’s football must function as its own business model. The women’s Bundesliga cannot be the smaller version of the men’s Bundesliga. If the table is a reflection of the economic power of the men’s clubs in the future, the women’s Bundesliga will not be attractive in the long term.
Axel Hellmann: In the initiative’s advisory board, we have brought together ideas on how women’s football can be brought to a higher level in a shorter period of time than the next ten years. From a club perspective, I am not satisfied with the level of development.
Why not?
Hellmann: Because we don’t have an exciting competitive environment: Of the last 22 titles since 2013, only one – 1. FFC Frankfurt’s DFB Cup victory in 2014 – did not go to VfL Wolfsburg or FC Bayern Munich. A twelve-team league that only plays net for five months a year loses its appeal.
Interview
imago/Jan Huebner
imago/Jan Huebner
Katja Kraus from the “Football can do more” initiative and Axel Hellmann, board spokesman for Eintracht Frankfurt and an advisory board member of the initiative, are dissatisfied with the state of German women’s football. They see a need for reform, especially in the Bundesliga, and have presented the German Football Association with a theses paper on its future viability. They explain why international connections are lost.
What is the approach of the initiative, which also includes well-known personalities such as Almuth Schult, Tabea Kemme and Bibiana Steinhaus?
Kraus: There are also entrepreneurs like Verena Pausder and Katharina Kurz, who, as founders of FC Viktoria Berlin, are implementing their own concept that is attracting a lot of attention. Having your own, credible identity, which also includes values and attitudes that have increasingly been lost in men’s football, is an opportunity. It takes a vision to harness the potential that women’s sport has as a whole, which we can see in the impressive developments in England and the USA.
What does a club representative suggest?
Hellmann: We have to get to a 16-player league very quickly and do more in terms of professionalization, which could possibly include minimum salaries, but also a salary cap. Because SC Freiburg, Werder Bremen and Eintracht Frankfurt would also have the chance to become champions.
In terms of sport, the league seems to be in view the performance of the teams in the Champions League to stagnate. So the hype of the EM 2022 is not enough?
Hellmann: A time horizon of eight to ten years for an increase in the Bundesliga is far too long for the international dynamics in the market. The British are outsourcing the women from the association, the Americans have already done that. Both have a completely different media depth and magnetically attract advertising partners. In Germany, many international corporations are willing to invest in women’s football as part of their diversity strategy, but due to the lack of reach, the marketing department then puts a significantly lower price tag than in men’s football. If we don’t react quickly, we will become a training market for larger leagues.
Kraus: It’s not about extending the hype, but about building a viable professional women’s league. Economic independence also brings a different self-image. The self-esteem of the female players is strengthened when the sport functions independently – and is not dependent on whether the decision-makers at the men’s clubs have money available for the women or whether the support corresponds to the spirit of the times.
Should the Bundesliga be separated from the DFB’s area of responsibility?
Hellmann: It will depend on the DFB whether this debate comes up or not. There is dissatisfaction among some clubs, including about how the clubs are integrated. This is not an issue for commissions or backroom conferences. This requires a larger framework at the top level. With our proposal we have made a constructive and also provocative contribution to further development. If the necessary adjustments can be made to the structure of the DFB, I have no problem with that at all. But if that’s not the case, we have to think about organizing women’s football independently.
Kraus: The question is, where are the best possible conditions to make the sport successful in the long term? Can the DFB do that or not? There are many positive signs, more and more sponsors who are explicitly involved in women’s football because they recognize the value of the sport and the socio-political dimension is also important to them. However, development will not work on its own; investments are needed, for example in visibility and reach, the quality of broadcasts, new formats and distribution channels. To achieve this, strategic partners must be found. And people who pursue the topic with competence and passion.
Shouldn’t clubs also point out the need for change?
Kraus: The best way to promote women’s football is for clubs to equip the departments so that they can operate independently, economically and in terms of personnel. Investments in women’s football are investments in the club brand, in new partnerships, new target groups, the value of the entire club – not charity projects.
Hellmann: We have to ensure that our women in Frankfurt are perceived as sportingly independent and develop their own identity, but at the same time are at home under the umbrella of the entire Eintracht family. This has a communicative but also an economic side. Women’s football should itself become a viable model.
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